So, somewhere in the middle of the night (at least for me) Samsung and Google held a joint event, in which they announced both the new Nexus phone, the Galaxy Nexus, and Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich. While the Galaxy Nexus is a pretty impressive phone, what we got to see from Ice Cream Sandwich surely didn't drop too many jaws.

Non-experts probably won’t tell the difference between Georgia and Times New Roman. Does that mean that Georgia is just a tweak of Times?

Fair enough... Yes, it is more or less a tweak - but it is an extensive tweak. Virtually everything about Georgia is different from Times in a small but noticable way (almost all characters are slightly differenct, the curves are different, the default spacing and sizing are different, etc.)

On the other hand Roboto and Helvetica differ greatly in a very small handful of details. However, for the most part they are virtually indistinguishable (in lower case at least).

I don't want to get into a style war over fonts though - I'm not a font designer and I certainly don't mean to belittle the process in any way (and I do understand that in font design a very tiny change generates a very large impact).

My point was simply that yes, Roboto is a new font - but it isn't anymore of a new font then Helvetica Neue was when it was introduced. They were both "new", and just because one of the had Helvetica in the name doesn't make it less so.